The Mod Changes Megathread

There's so many changes coming to mods that we thought it might be helpful to keep all this info together in one place! As we get closer to release, I will update this thread with guides, media and the latest news on Mods.

Our Goals for the Changes to Mods:

Clarity – Make mods easier to understand for players who find them overwhelming or confusing

Ease of Use – Make mods easier to use for all players, but particularly address usability concerns of players who currently engage with them, and make the system work the way they want it to

Balance – Create more diversity in the mod meta by elevating some of the sets that are currently under-utilized

Depth – Deeper investment in mods while respecting the investment made so far in existing mods

Any clarity on the boost on primary stats when going from 5 dot to 6 dot mods? Your example shows the Defense primary going from 11.75% to 20%, is that the sort of boost we should expect? What will Speed primary arrows go to? Crit Damage triangles?

Of course they will. Now you have to have 5* mods on your pilots to max out your ships. 6* mods will be require to max out ships in the future. What a brilliant idea! Keep going CG, hope you have fun by killing your game!

1. Mod Energy
2. Mod Loadouts
3. Assign existing mods (may be useful)
4. Advanced Filter
5. Some mod sets getting bonus set values (defense, offense, CC etc)
6. Multiplier % increase system (allows people to control the stat increase but IT IS NOT USER FRIENDLY) -- I like this way of letting people know before they invest resources but it is against the spirit of the mod revamp. Since we are getting 6 dot mods... I'm glad the stat increases aren't RNG but a % of existing stats

If I could leave any feedback, they should be obtainable by adding another challenge tier to existing mod challenges. Its just so bad in every way imaginable. Mods shouldn't be a grind.

This is just plain awful. I really liked pretty much everything else other than this.

There is also a lot of math and homework involved when upgrading mods from 5 to 6. Its less simpler and more of an annoying statistics assignment.

Its just against the whole "simpler and easier for all players"

FEEDBACK

1. I hope you guys have a preview of post-slicing stats rather than "Try slicing first and then see what your stats are"
2. Make 6 dot mods farmable via mod energy down the road

EDIT:
After doing some calculations... I'm liking the 6 dot mods are set at 3% speed increase. It emphasizes more on other secondaries. Looking at those % increases, I think I'm going to like this a lot

1. Mod Energy
2. Mod Loadouts
3. Assign existing mods (may be useful)
4. Advanced Filter
5. Some mod sets getting bonus set values (defense, offense, CC etc)
6. Multiplier % increase system (allows people to control the stat increase but IT IS NOT USER FRIENDLY) -- I like this way of letting people know before they invest resources but it is against the spirit of the mod revamp. Since we are getting 6 dot mods... I'm glad the stat increases aren't RNG but a % of existing stats

If I could leave any feedback, they should be obtainable by adding another challenge tier to existing mod challenges. Its just so bad in every way imaginable. Mods shouldn't be a grind.

This is just plain awful. I really liked pretty much everything else other than this.

There is also a lot of math and homework involved when upgrading mods from 5 to 6. Its less simpler and more of an annoying statistics assignment.

Its just against the whole "simpler and easier for all players"

FEEDBACK

1. I hope you guys have a preview of post-slicing stats rather than "Try slicing first and then see what your stats are"
2. Make 6 dot mods farmable via mod energy down the road

EDIT:
After doing some calculations... I'm liking the 6 dot mods are set at 3% speed increase. It emphasizes more on other secondaries. Looking at those % increases, I think I'm going to like this a lot

Prior to this update, one of the arguments I saw against the concept of six- and seven-dot mods was having to farm all new mods, and then feeling like the five-dots that were invested in decreased in value.

In this system, yes, there is farming involved--of the new materials. But they are not all new mods, they are your existing mods, so it doesn't feel like those were a wasted investment. What's more is you get to choose which mods to slice to six-dot. With farming all new mods, it would take just as much time to farm good sets of six-dots as it did to farm all those good five-dots.

So this method does introduce new things to farm, but also builds heavily on your previous investment instead of needing to start over. So I think I like this way better than having brand new mods in a new location.

Any clarity on the boost on primary stats when going from 5 dot to 6 dot mods? Your example shows the Defense primary going from 11.75% to 20%, is that the sort of boost we should expect? What will Speed primary arrows go to? Crit Damage triangles?

Mysteriously missing. I will make a chart and get that up in the Brief Overview shortly

@CG_SBCrumb I see the Devs and Beta testers are still testing these changes on an account with over 400 million credits. I still think you'll find that a large barrier to players engaging in mods is the outright cost compared to the MEDIAN player credit balance. The recent price drop is likely to do very little, especially when the cost of slicing (which is conspicuously cut off in your announcement thread), the cost of actually using the mod load out system, AND the cost of the auto-select feature are added in. I dare say, the actual cost to the average player will go up.

Seems like the team is getting bad advice, and undercutting their own stated goals, again. You're undercutting clarity by making it more expensive. Ditto for ease of use. Added costs will then undercut increased investment from anyone but those who can afford to spend real resources on a mobile game.

The cynic in me says this is intentional positive spin on changes that are REALLY intended to increase credit and crystal spends in game to drive the bottom line. With other recent changes that also follow this same bent (e.g., increased frequency of Marquees, their subsequent frequency of appearance in TB Platoons) I have a hard time buying this benefits anyone but people with very deep pockets.

The average established player will spend the next 2 years playing catch up. I shudder to think what new players will face.

Neutral:
- New level at tables
- 6 Dot Mods seem like they will require heavy investment which will greatly impact both arenas

Con:
- Removed any reason for farming Jawas since they are removing team specific set-ups

I call your jawa con a pro. Useless faction for new players to waste resources on.

I understand that many people would agree with you and there are many players that will benefit from this change. I do not deny that it is beneficial. I do consider it a con because it takes away the only reason to use Jawas at all. Yes, I know that they get a bonus in the Tank Raid, but thats it. Ewoks at least unlock the chance to gain extra zeta materials monthly.

So I am currently viewing everything I have seen as an overall positive future update (if it actually manages to come out with few if any bugs like past recent updates have been so notorious for). However with anything in life there are some good and bad.

Good:
1. Mod specific energy. About time.
2. Effective filter/search perimeters for mods in game!
3. Saved mods sets (no longer will I have to spend 15 minutes before, and 15 after a legendary event switching mods around).
4. Instantly transfer single mods from one character to another.
5. Mod recommendations which will make modding secondary/bleh teams/characters a breeze.
6. A good explanation on why mods will have all 4 stats revealed before splicing (alot of people couldn't fathom why you were changing it.)
7. 6 Dot mods need to be crafted instead of farmed directly from missions or bought in store.

Bad/Worrisome:
1. 6 Dot mods exist at all. I'll explain more on this below.
2. What appears to be a large amount of different splicing materials needed to splice mods into different tiers. Makes it look like it will be rather time consuming to farm the necessary materials to actually splice a mod.
3. Some of the stat changes when splicing a mod up to 6 dots compared to others. I will explain more on this below.
4. Currently no information on whether or not splicing materials will be available in the mod store or shipments.
5. No information on how the energy will work. What is the cost of the energy refresh and will we be getting free energy at some point during the day like we do with Catina and Ships?
6. Now with our 4th energy type in the game, double the energy types before ships 2.0, you will have officially made it so only paying players can do max refreshes of all their energy (by this I mean refreshes in areas before the cost doubles to do another refresh). I'll talk more about this below.

Some Suggestions:

6 Dot Mods and Splicing Material Availability: With any update the comes into the game obviously you need to take two different types of players into account. The f2p player and the p2p player. You need to make sure the f2p player gets something to get excited about and something to work towards that is easily accessible, but you also need to put some kind of barrier that players can get around by spending money. So in this instance you want p2p players to be able to access these splicing materials in an easier fashion than f2p players, but you don't want to make it so easy that f2p players feel like they are being cheated and put into an unfair situation. Since this update revolves around mods which has a direct impact on arena/ship shards where these two types of players are in direct competition with each other, you need to make sure this balance is good right from the start. However we haven't been given enough information yet to able to determine whether this balance will be good. The energy refresh cost is a factor, but I'll go into that in its own thread. The big issue will be how many types of materials are there to farm for splicing and how easy will it be for p2p players to buy these materials from the different stores. Can I purchase a stack of how ever many materials for taking a blue mod to purple in the mod store or will those only be sold in shipments? What will the cost of these items be if they are in shipments? Are these items going to start popping up in raids and if they do will they only be available in the heroic raid which shall not be named? My biggest worry is we will see the materials to take a purple mod to gold, or more importantly the materials to take a gold mod to a 6 dot, super hard to get by farming them in missions, and we will see them for sale in shipments. The balance here is super important. I personally don't think mods/mod materials should be able to be purchased in shipments, since they haven't been sold there previously. I would prefer to see them sold in the mod store where players would have to purchase credits/ship credits packs from the store to easily buy these materials.

Too Many Energy Types: I need to preface by saying that any time we get a new energy type that we can use to farm in different areas of the game, that's a good thing. However what I am specifically worried about and want to point out is that successful pvp players are not getting as full of access to all areas as they have in the past because of this. Let me explain. One reason why this game is so good, and why I think it has such a large player base, is not only the perception that f2p players can compete with p2p players, but that they can and do complete with these players. If you are a smart player who focuses on doing well in pvp, you can earn enough in this game to stay on pace with people who may spend $20-40 a month playing. The issue is those crystals are not going as far as they used to. For example before Ships 2.0, a player who reached the #1 spot in their shard in Arena could earn 500 crystals. That allowed them to do all 3 cheap energy refreshes and all 3 cheap catina refreshes for a total cost of 450 crystals. The 50 left over added onto the crystals they would earn from log in rewards, GW, and daily challenges could then be saved up to maybe purchase some gear in shipments 1-2 times per week. Now with Ship energy (3 refreshes for 300 crystals total) puts that total up to 750 crystals. But if you are successful in both arena and ships, this still isn't a problem and you can still get all these refreshes since you can earn up to a max of 900 crystals per day from both the tables. However if I am assuming correctly that mod energy will be the same as Catina and you will be able to get 3 refreshes for a total of 300 crystals, then the total to get all refreshes jumps up to 1050 crystals. This means you would have to likely get the #1 spot in both arenas while doing all your daily stuff to just stay even. So what used to be an achievable feet with some planing and fortitude is not nearly as possible to achieve except for either the most dedicated player or someone who pays. Now some might be asking, how do we fix this? The first thing that comes to mind is to make the ship payouts match the arena payouts. Ships is a game mode that the devs obviously want us to care about, though even after Ships 2.0 most view it as a waste of time. However if the rewards actually matched those of arena, maybe you would find players treat it as seriously as arena and in turn we would be able to earn a few extra crystals to help use with all these other energy refreshes. The vast majority of f2p players would still likely have to make a choice on what to refresh and what not to refresh (I would say 95%+ of us) but the burden would be less while still enticing p2p players and whales to spend crystals to do all their refreshes.